Methods for rights administration components are essentially known. For example, methods are known in which a local rights administration component retrieves a license number or similar identifier of a customer and checks online in a database of the rights provider, for example, a software manufacturer, whether the customer has sufficient rights to use the software. The disadvantage of solutions of this type is that a data connection between the rights administration component and the database of the rights provider must exist for their implementation to enable activation of an application function.
In other approaches, usage rights are permanently linked to a given software component or hardware component, for example, through encryption on the basis of a unique device identifier. The disadvantage of approaches of this type is that a usage right, once it has been created, cannot be transferred, or can only be transferred with very substantial outlay, from one component to another.
It could therefore be helpful to provide a method and a rights administration component which operate autonomously, i.e., independently from a database of a rights provider, and simultaneously enable a particularly high flexibility in the administration and monitoring of usage rights.